


Borrowed Time

by Trobadora



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: M/M, Psychic Sex, Time Lord sexuality, pre-End of Time for the Doctor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-10
Updated: 2014-05-10
Packaged: 2018-01-24 06:20:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1594742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trobadora/pseuds/Trobadora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Of course Jack had noticed, right from the start: the way the Doctor would turn his head that particular way, the way he'd brush off hands that tried to curl around his skull, that touched the back of his neck. The way he was guarding himself, from what Jack didn't know.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Borrowed Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Luorescence](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luorescence/gifts).



> Written for the 2014 [Winter Companion Doctor/Jack Gift Exchange](http://wintercompanion.livejournal.com/223537.html). The prompt I used was: "Alien biology and sexuality that really differ from humans'. Maybe something more mental-oriented?"

When the Doctor kissed him, Jack froze. It was the middle of the Pranthian Plaza on Carvennis Prime, and they'd run into each other not ten minutes before, both tracking down a hyperspace fissure rapidly expanding into a giant transdimensional rift.

They'd run into each other, and then run _with_ each other only moments after, coats billowing behind them side by side, brown and blue. Sonic screwdriver and Vortex Manipulator had confirmed a successful implosion, nothing more than a little ambient quintron radiation left to bear witness to what might have been a world-destroying cataclysm. They'd stopped in the empty, evacuated plaza, grinned at each other, and then ...

Then.

The Doctor's mouth was unexpectedly soft, and there was a smile hiding in the lines of his lips. When he leaned back a moment later, Jack's mouth remained open, and his brain was an ancient engine stuttering and stalling, refusing to start. Before him, the skin around brown eyes was crinkling. 

"Speechless, hm? Well, if you're going to be that way ..." And the Doctor leaned forward again, a soft press of lips against the corner of Jack's mouth, a nudge with the tip of a cool tongue.

Jack almost pushed him away, almost asked _Why?_ and _Why now?_ and _Who are you and what have you done with the Doctor I know?_ Instead, he wrapped his arms around the Doctor's body, holding him tight, and let himself sink into the kiss.

It was a slow, careful exploration. Jack took every advantage, learning the Doctor's lips, his teeth, the roof of his mouth, and the Doctor matched him taste for taste, a strange and focused intent in every move. 

The Doctor's taste was almost human, just like so much else about him - almost, but not quite. When Jack curled his hand around the back of the Doctor's head, the Doctor flinched a little, twisting his head away, but relaxed again when Jack's hand settled around the side of his face.

Jack pulled at the Doctor's lower lip with his teeth, and smiled when the Doctor let out a low hiss. 

"Are you saying you want me to come along?" Jack asked, quietly, against the Doctor's mouth. 

"Don't be slow, of course I am." The Doctor pulled back a little, the better to deliver an eyeroll and a challenging raise of his eyebrows. "Unless you've got something better to do?"

"Oh, I don't know, worlds to save, people to do?" Jack smirked. "Though looks like I just got an all-in-one offer."

~*~

Jack Harkness was not a fool. The Doctor's uncharacteristic tenderness had stunned him, but no longer than a moment. Then he'd remembered.

It had been a long time ago, but Jack remembered exactly the last time he'd seen this Doctor, a salute across a crowded bar and a message of life, when life was the furthest thing from Jack's mind.

It had been a good-bye; he'd known it then. 

And it didn't take much to realise _this_ Doctor already knew it was coming. It wasn't tenderness so much as wistfulness in his eyes, in his touch. It was a good-bye unspoken, a last dance drawn out while the music was already fading.

And because Jack, too, knew it was coming, because this Doctor was already in his past, Jack went along. A moment out of sequence, out of their proper time. He'd not met the Doctor after that day at the bar, after all, didn't know if he would. If there was a Doctor to meet, past that day. 

He wasn't ready to lose him, would never be. He'd cling to any twist and loop and snag in their timelines that gave him a moment more.

~*~

They travelled. One trip turned into the next, one adventure followed the next, a well-choreographed, well-practiced pattern they both slotted into smoothly. At night, their bodies continued the dance, movement after movement until their very bones knew it by heart.

Jack tried very hard not to remember it was a farewell dance.

~*~

The day came. Jack knew it was there when the Doctor sat up abruptly, looking down at Jack with a grimace.

Jack pushed himself up by his elbows, kicked away the rumpled sheet, and met the Doctor's gaze, waiting. 

The Doctor bit his lip, and his mouth moved for a moment without sound. He looked away, but Jack was good at reading the lines of his body, the shadows in his eyes. The twist of his head to the left, eyes down and then up. The Doctor wasn't human, but Jack knew his body's language well enough. 

"Sorry," Jack said quietly, not sure what he was apologising for.

" _Your song is ending_ ," the Doctor said, not looking up, his voice strange, the intonation completely unlike his own. A quote.

Jack swallowed. "I figured." What a thing. They were naked in bed together, and they were going to talk about death.

The Doctor's lips turned downward. "I thought you might have." Then he lifted his head, and brown eyes burned into Jack's, dark and shadowed. "Do you trust me, Captain?"

Jack blinked, and then snorted. "What kind of a question is that?"

The Doctor sucked in his lower lip, chewed it for a moment. He reached for Jack's hand and lifted it. Slowly, almost shyly, he guided it to the back of his head, fingers curling in at the base of his skull. Pressed Jack's fingers into his skin.

"There," he breathed, his eyes fluttering shut. And then there was a smell - a taste - something indefinable in the air, and the Doctor flushed.

_What the hell?_ Jack leaned back a little, puzzled. "Did you just produce some kind of pheromone?"

"Oh, you can perceive that? Fifty-first century humans, brilliant!" The Doctor's expression went from embarrassed to delighted like turning a page. He ran his free hand over his hair and grinned, free and unabashed, the shadows gone from his eyes for the moment.

"Just at the edge of my range," Jack admitted. He wasn't afraid to admit that he'd completely lost the track of the conversation. What was the Doctor getting at?

"I know you noticed. You're a lot of things, but not blind."

Of course Jack had noticed, right from the start: the way the Doctor would turn his head that particular way, the way he'd brush off hands that tried to curl around his skull, that touched the back of his neck. The way he was guarding himself, from what Jack didn't know.

He'd filed it away as old trauma, nothing to taint their stolen moments with. But still he'd had to suppress a flinch of his own every time his hand slipped a little, and the Doctor had turned his head just so. 

"I thought you didn't want me to notice," Jack said, a little too sharply, and tried to soften the words with a bashful smile.

"Nope." The Doctor popped the 'p', and then his mouth stayed open for a long moment while the heaviness returned to his eyes. "Didn't want you to. Knew better. And anyway, perhaps you should. It's not like there's anyone else."

Again, Jack failed to puzzle out the Doctor's meaning. He sighed, and pulled his hand away from the Doctor's neck against momentary resistance. "Doc, actual words, all right?"

The Doctor rubbed his own hand against the back of his neck, grimacing. "It's one of my telepathic glands," he said eventually, pushing out the words as if they were unpleasant in his mouth. And promptly fell silent again.

Jack rolled his eyes and made a get-on-with-it gesture even while speculation started branching into several different fascinating directions behind his eyes, and the Doctor sighed.

"Fine. Yes. You're absolutely right, it's about sex. Did you really need me to spell that out? You stimulate that gland, I could to lose my grip on my telepathic barriers." The Doctor bared his teeth. "We did that, you know. The technical term would be _telepathic interpenetration_."

"Now you're just talking dirty." Jack couldn't have wiped the smirk from his face if he'd tried, and he didn't try at all. 

The Doctor scrunched up his nose. "Stop laughing at me."

Jack batted his eyelashes. "Are you saying you don't actually just want me for my body?" His mind was working over the possibilities. He'd known Time Lords were somewhat telepathic; why had he never considered this?

Because he'd never been a fan of telepathy; that was why. 

"Stop it." The Doctor sighed. "I shouldn't have mentioned it. You're not even telepathic yourself."

"But it would still work."

"Ish." Another grimace. "You wouldn't have any control," the Doctor finally said, not meeting Jack's eyes. "I can't ask that of you."

It was so blatantly manipulative a move, Jack almost laughed out loud. It was a scary thought, opening himself up to the Doctor that way. Carefully-maintained obliviousness, on both their parts, was much harder to sustain mind-to-mind. But frightening as it was, facing the truth of what there was between them, it would be far worse to lose him, never having taken the chance.

"Now, now," he said amiably, reaching out to brush his fingers over the Doctor's spiky hair. "You're the one who just told me that in all the time we've been sleeping together, he's been missing out." 

"No!" The Doctor scowled, offended. "What gave you that idea? You of all people know better than to think there's any _required part_." He grimaced a little with the last words. 

Deflection by truth, tried-and-true. Jack knew better than to let himself be distracted. "So why the change of heart?"

"I'm the last of the Time Lords," the Doctor said, the curl of his lips half wry, half bitter. 

He didn't have to spell out the rest: _And I'm going to die._ For a moment, the unspoken words hung in the air between them; then Jack smirked, and leered at the Doctor, very deliberately. Jumping right in.

"Always willing to learn something new." 

The Doctor swatted at him, a knowing, only slightly strained grin blooming on his face, pushing aside the grief. "You have no idea."

Jack waggled his eyebrows. "Show me, then."

"Think you can take it, hm? You're only human. And not naturally telepathic."

Jack laughed. "You can be gentle with me."

The Doctor eyed him speculatively. "Hm. I wonder." He leaned forward, palms on Jack's cheeks, peering into his eyes in mock-examination. "Now," he said conversationally, pushing Jack onto his back, "I'm not sure what your physical responses will be like - there's always some degree of unintended feedback, with non-telepaths. So it's good you're already lying down."

Jack returned the Doctor's grin. He'd had enough psychic training himself to know that to be true. "Let's find out."

The Doctor rolled on top of him, and Jack snaked a hand around, fingers just brushing the sensitive spot at the base of the Doctor's skull.

"Yes. There," the Doctor breathed. Then he breathed again, in and out, long and deep, and Jack could feel his body relaxing, muscle by muscle, sinew by no-longer-tense sinew. Could see him letting go of a grip that had been clenched for too long.

Jack lifted his head a little, and in one move, pressed his fingers into the back of the Doctor's neck and his lips against the Doctor's mouth. A muffled moan broke itself free from the Doctor's lungs, half caught in Jack's mouth, half released through the Doctor's nose, and Jack could smell alien pheromones in the air, more intense than before.

And then, suddenly, Jack's physical senses seemed to be switched off.

Jack was surrounded by a vast, inhuman presence, burning cool against him. It was the world. It was everything. It was ...

... it was shifting into perspective, with a bit of a mental effort, and after a moment, Jack realised he could still see and hear and feel. The push against his mind had been overwhelming at first, but their bodies were there, surging against each other with the rush of the Doctor's telepathic deluge. 

The Doctor's eyes were impossibly dilated, and his cock was hard against Jack's belly. He was reaching out with hands and mind, and Jack could feel it - feel it both, hands strong and heavy on Jack's face, holding him in place for a deep, ravaging kiss; a white-cold spike of _something_ searing the fringes of his mind; the Doctor's body moving in already-frantic rhythm against him. And as his body surged, so did his mind, forcing Jack's arousal up another notch.

Jack's body arched from the bed, pure desire flooding him, an alien urgency - a powerful need for _something_ his human brain couldn't properly render. He shuddered in the Doctor's mental grasp, opening his mouth, opened his telepathic barriers, reaching _back_. Desire latched onto desire, a feedback loop of want and need, unhampered by any hesitation, any holding back.

Something at the back of Jack's brain that could still think clearly almost shattered, shaken apart by a synchronicity he'd never even suspected might exist.

It wasn't just him, had never just been him.

The Doctor's mind was cradling him, holding him, penetrating him, memories/sensations/feelings washing over Jack in rhythmic gushes, powerful, overwhelming and intimate, giving and demanding trust in turn. And yet the Doctor was being careful, keeping away from the private places, the things Jack kept to himself.

Jack was beyond self-control. All he could do was rush against the Doctor, meeting him urgency for urgency, and the thought flashed through him that it was good the Doctor was on top, because he didn't have any coordination left. Unreleased laughter rose in his mind, bubbling into the Doctor's thoughts, 

The Doctor's body slammed against Jack's, his cock slapping against Jack's belly with every thrust, his hands gripping Jack's shoulders, hard and desperate. There would be bruises, some part of Jack still knew. No matter. Again. Again. Jack was swimming on endorphins now, and it didn't take long before the Doctor came, collapsing between Jack's legs even as the mental force of his release swept Jack over the edge as well.

It flooded him, a sharp and bitter pleasure, dragged him under and drowned him.

~*~

Jack came to himself slowly, blinking away tears. The Doctor was still on top of him, a sprawl of bony limbs, but the mental contact was gone. The stickiness between them wasn't unexpected, but Jack's mind felt raw, a not-entirely-unpleasant burn he'd never felt before.

He blinked up at the Doctor, blearily. "And was it good for you, too?" he quipped, running on instinct. Anything to deflect from what he'd seen between them.

The Doctor snorted a small laugh, little more than a hiccough of his chest and a huff of air against Jack's neck. "I think I like your mind."

Too serious, much too serious.

"You _think_?" Jack pouted in mock-offense, recovering his wits. "Now there's a ringing endorsement."

The Doctor swatted against his shoulder, ineffectually, as if movement were too much effort just now. "Stop fishing, Captain. You're ruining the moment."

Back on track. Jack almost sighed in relief. "Oh, were we having a moment? I hadn't realised," he quipped instead.

The Doctor huffed Jack's neck again. "Humans. Always so slow, how do you even get by?"

"Speed's not everything, you know." Jack wrapped his arms around the Doctor, 

"Get you to recant that tomorrow, Captain."

Jack's heart clenched. There was still a tomorrow, but for how long? He forced the thought aside. He'd take every day as it came, as few or as many as they had. "Is that a promise?" he said lightly.

The Doctor must have noticed the roughness in his voice, but he ignored it. "You bet it is."


End file.
